Annual Christmas Party/ Bonus Thread: 2018 Edition

The best part is the reaction by the boss' wife, who starts ripping on him for being a cheap bastard.

 

No the cop's is the best "If I had a rubber hose, I would beat you into a..."

 

Before I retired, we went something like 25 years without a Christmas bonus. We used to have a catered Christmas holiday party which lasted throughout the day and night shifts. It evolved into a potluck with lots of casseroles, store-bought deli trays and store-bought cookies.

 

$2,000 bonus. Party at the CEO's house with tons and tons of good Tex-Mex food, booze, wine, beer. Gift exchange ($20 or less), prize drawings (I won a jar of candy by guessing the number of pieces in it), a Christmas CD of songs selected by the staff members, photo booth. One of the gifts exchanged was the Rock- 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, so most of us ended up boxing each other on that well into the night.

 

At the big daily I never got a bonus, and there was no party.
At the small, family-owned weekly paper I got a $300 Christmas bonus, plus the publisher paid for a nice party (including booze) and we did a gift exchange.

 

Probably too drunk for 4:26 p.m., and we finished second in the putting contest. A good day.

 

Apparently they had the holiday pot luck this afternoon. Some sweets left over that the sports staff will likely devour. Also got a $25 gift check to use at local businesses.

 

Lots of things have gone into the shitter with our company, but amazingly the Christmas bonus isn't one of them. We got an extra week's pay and there was a catered lunch a few weeks ago. I didn't get to go to the lunch because it was on my day off, I had some personal business to take care of, and probably wouldn't have driven an hour to the office just to get a free lunch anyway.
The catered lunch replaced a really good and gluttonous potluck we had for years when the staff was much bigger. Nowadays if we did the potluck it'd probably be a loaf of bread, two 2-liter bottles of Coke, one tray of cookies and a Crock Pot full of beenie weenies.

 

Where do you work? What field? Not sports writing obviously.

 

That's special that the small town publisher gave a $300 bonus. I'm assuming this was during the glory years and he/she decided to share the wealth just a little bit. Fredrick haters know I'm really wanting to criticize the suits for their behavior this time of year - no bonuses, no parties, nothing but comments like, "we're all lucky to have a job." Whatever ... it's a very very classless business, newspapering. Tell me it's not please. (hate to be a grinch this time of year but Fredrick gets upset at stuff like this).

 

Yay. The $25 bucks ... it's the thought that counts here. They didn't have to do that in this economy.

 

Nope. Not anymore. I work for a trade association in the automotive industry.